Croatia-Water-Blue
by Hollyesque
Summary: And John—good, solid, jumper-wearing John—says: "No."


It started with one word.

Really, it was more like six words, but he's counting it as one because it was the same word, just repeated over and over and over.

And he's going to say it again in five…four…three…two…

"No."

There it is.

"You can't be serious, John," he says, hands on his hips and doing his best to look down his nose at his friend.

It has been nearly ten minutes now, and John still isn't buying it. He buys very little of what Sherlock tries to sell him nowadays—a distant part of his brain notes that perhaps their friendship is strained because he is giving John fewer and fewer reasons to trust him, but that's neither here nor there.

The main issue is that John is _in his way_ , and Lestrade is letting him on a case for the first time since—

Well.

"I never took you for the selfish type, John," he tries, "You'd truly rather someone's murder go unsolved than miss out on me talking about feelings?" he puts on his best sneer, inching ever so slowly to the left as he does so that John maybe won't catch the movement—

A hand slams into the doorframe in front of him, blocking his exit, and _damn it all to hell_ but he can't contain the flinch.

John sees it, and he knows he is defeated.

"Hey," the doctor's voice goes unbearably soft as Sherlock sags, humiliated by his body's betrayal and disappointed by the loss of a promising case. "We discussed this."

"As I recall, I was allowed to do very little talking—"

"You have problems of your own to focus on right now." John steps carefully away from the doorway and lays a hand gently on Sherlock's shoulder. "And you want to hide that fact in the hustle of a good case, but I can't watch you try to bury everything in the Work just so it can flare back up when something else triggers you."

"Oh, _please_ , John—"

"So yeah, I'm gonna be selfish this once. Let it go unsolved if the Yard can't do their job. I'm even gonna be selfish enough to ask this of you."

Sherlock shrugs John's hand off his shoulder, determined not to look at that open, earnest face, every muscle coiled tight at the prospect of divulging what John is going to ask him for. He's barely made it to the window, though, before John says those irresistible, damnable words:

"Sherlock, please, for me."

Fuck him. Fucking fuck him. Sherlock has never been much of one to swear, but fuck him.

He shrugs out of his coat and hates that he can't deny the man a damn thing.

* * *

The first time he kills, he is in Vegas.

The man is ironically named Seamus Small, considering he must weigh close to four hundred pounds. He is red-faced, gluttonous, cocky. And he runs a human trafficking ring based in South Africa.

Sherlock sets up his sniper rifle in an empty office ( _clerk on maternity leave picture of sonogram in desk drawer focusfocusfocus_ ) and watches the man for six minutes before executing the shot. Bullet ripping through frontal lobe temporal lobe brainstem chunks of skull flying blood spray on a nearby showgirl screaming screaming _screaming_ —

Sherlock swiftly dismantles the rifle, wipes all evidence of his presence from the room, and retreats.

He spends the next four hours vomiting in his dingy motel room, composes eighty-three text messages to John, and deletes every one of them.

He's been away from John for 1,814,400 seconds. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

* * *

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

He was doing well, _so well_ , he'd even solved it and had his deductions at the ready, gearing up for a good gloat and to hear that coveted exhale of _"Fantastic!"_ from John. He was ready to share that grin ( _"We can't giggle at a crime scene"_ ) and head home with the thrill of victory singing through his bloodstream. It was going to be better than cocaine, better than _anything_ , simply because John would catch his eye on the cab ride home and smile and the smile would crinkle his eyes for the first time in far, far too long.

It didn't matter that the victim had been butchered, beaten, raped. That wasn't even one of Sherlock's (admittedly weak) attempts at denial—it truly hadn't mattered. He'd separated himself from it the same way he did whenever the victim was a short, sandy-haired man or one of his homeless network. It wouldn't do to let things like that affect his work—he'd have been utterly useless if he did. So he kept it at arms' length, and he was fine. Truly.

That is what made this whole thing an absolute tragedy—that for the first time in _years_ , he'd felt something akin to normal, had felt _alive_ in a way that went beyond pulling oxygen into his lungs and sending it streaming through his veins to couple with his elevated adrenaline. He'd felt like himself, if only for a moment—and now that moment is over and he feels robbed of something unequivocally precious.

The story—as he's told, for a good chunk of it is missing from his memory—goes as follows: Sherlock had just stepped outside 221B to hail a cab that would take him to St. Bart's so he could confirm his findings in Molly's lab when someone had plunged a hypodermic into his neck _stupid stupid stupid_ and bustled him into a car boot.

John, bless him, hadn't thought a thing of it. Sherlock had disappeared in a whirl of long coat and "Don't wait up," so he had probably assumed the screeching tires were the cabbie obeying Sherlock's order to _hurry up_. There's a good chance John had simply ignored it as well, cross with Sherlock as he was for being left behind again.

But every time in the past two months he suggested John come along, the doctor stormed out of the room and let his tea go cold, so how was Sherlock to know he actually wanted to be included? An enigma, that man.

Of course, what John unfortunately hadn't known was that Sherlock had been carted to the outskirts of the city, deposited in a decrepit warehouse and thoroughly roughed up.

What makes him so indelibly furious at himself, though, is that it wasn't even that bad. He remembers bits and pieces before his rescue, and the concussion has to have been the worst of it. Blows, he could handle. Broken fingers would make playing the violin a challenge for a while, but they are far from crushed and he is nothing if not resilient.

Even when one of them had taken out a knife and sliced through his right calf, he had known immediately that the thug had missed his tendons and the muscle would heal, though it would be a major inconvenience.

He'd undeniably survived worse.

That was where he ran into trouble, though. The concussion and the drug and the pain had his limbic system going haywire; was he chained to a wall in Serbia or tied to a chair outside London? He couldn't be sure anymore after an embarrassingly little while; the smell of his own blood was far too strong and far, far too fresh in his memory. It was only a little pain but it was _too much_ and he was thrown for a loop of _don't lose focus don't lose focus think think think think thinkthinkthinkthink_ and he hated it but he could feel himself reverting back to that perpetual state of fight or flight, feel himself shrinking ever further into the corners of his mind palace, readying himself to shut and barricade the doors to wait out the storm.

And it's the worst reason ever, but that's the reason why, when John and Lestrade and the cavalry found him, he was nearly catatonic. His olfactory and somatosensory and optical senses had thrown too much at him too fast, too soon after recovering from the worst abuses of his life. He had a vague impression of hands on his face, hands rubbing circulation back into his arms, hands at the spot where his jaw became his neck to feel the hummingbird-wing-flutter of his terrified heart. Looking back, he can even recall John's voice calling his name, begging for any sort of sign that he was aware, but at the time, he had been trapped somewhere in Eastern Europe and _that's just you wishing John was here. He's not. He's not. Focus._

He'd turned to stone, sunk into the foundation on which that warehouse had been built and made a home for himself, paralyzed by stimuli and overloaded to the point of short-circuiting.

He didn't come back online until hours later, but John had no problem telling him all about how he had apparently reanimated in the ambulance and "spectacularly lost his shit", flailing desperately against the paramedics and shrieking in a different language. Evidently he had made himself so upset that he was sick all over some poor spot-faced EMT and didn't cease his thrashing until he was put under conscious sedation so the hospital staff could stitch his leg.

When he resurfaced he was himself again—more or less—but the look on John's face had told him they would have words about this.

Even worse, he'd had to practically beg not to be kept in the hospital overnight ("They need to monitor you, Sherlock." " _You_ can monitor me. At Baker Street."), and he had only gotten the man to budge after making himself reach a brand new level of pathetic ("I want to go _home_ , John").

He'd loathed the way his voice sounded like a whine, the way his hands trembled ( _Comedown from adrenaline high might pass out soon want home want John want John want John_ ), but the doctor's face had softened considerably after that and he'd said, "Alright, mate. We'll go home. Okay."

 _We'll go home_.

Perhaps the day hadn't been a waste after all.

* * *

He's stabbed in Karachi; inexcusable, sloppy, winds up having to squeeze the life out of that woman like the Golem because he was too thick to think he would need a weapon for this one. He'd gotten cocky. He'd gotten lazy.

He'd killed again.

He sews the skin together with coarse clothing thread because his suture kit ran out months ago and if the wound festers he will die alone but he was going to do that anyway so fuck it.

 _Well done, Golem_ , John's sardonic voice mocks him. _Are you for hire now, too, then? Gonna prey on little kids and innocent museum guards?_

 _Forgive me, John. Please. Please._

He stares at his hands for a very long time after that. Scrubs them raw. Scratches at them until they bleed. All in vain—he can still feel the erratic puffs of her breath against his palms.

He's been away from John for 20,736,000 seconds. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

* * *

John makes the innocent mistake of leaving Sherlock alone while he darts down to the store to get supplies. It isn't his fault—Sherlock was supposed to be sleeping for two more hours before John had to wake him up again to check his concussion.

But Sherlock seems to be in the mood to bugger absolutely everything up, so he wakes early, confused and alone and muddled by the pounding in his head. His brain seems to have restored itself from the last backup—every honk of ever car horn outside is a knife slicing into his skull through his brain matter severing the brain stem the way his bullet severed Small's—

And he is walking

On frozen concrete and it bites his toes

because they took his shoes

right before they sliced open the bottoms of his feet from heel to toe _soyoudonttrytorunagain_

and he thinks maybe the pinky toe on the left foot is a lost cause

and he is leaving bloody footprints behind because they _sliced open his feet_

and they are touching him skin on skin on skin and he cannot _stand_ the feeling of skin on skin anymore not after she scratched at the hand that covered her face and puffed her last breaths into his palm and looked her killer in the eye as she died—

and suddenly there is light ( _too much light far too much light_ ) and his knees hit tile and he's staring at porcelain _why porcelain there's no porcelain here only stone and ice and violence_ —

and when poor John Watson reenters the flat, it is to the sight of his trembling flat mate retching into the bathtub. _My, how the mighty fall_.

* * *

He crouches low to peer out the window of the abandoned house he's been squatting in while in Afghanistan. He watches a sandstorm on the horizon, preparing to converge on the village, and he watches across the way as a Taliban militant trains a rifle Moriarty's arms dealers dealt him on some poor sod Sherlock can't see.

Sherlock wonders what John looked like through the eye of Moran's rifle.

He sets up his own.

They fire at the same time, and Sherlock likes to think that the militant will never know if his bullet reached its target.

He falls like a puppet whose strings have been cut, and then there's shouting, and he dismantles his rifle the way he has for months and months and months now: swiftly, wordlessly, efficiently.

He hasn't said a word to anyone in months. Hasn't had anyone to say a word to. He feels as though the sand has settled into his lungs, shriveled up every word he might possibly have to say. He isn't anyone's friend, colleague, companion, lover—merely a job, a machine with the kill button taped down.

It's a revolting thing, to have to relearn loneliness after you've been given a taste of true companionship.

Sweat trickles down his skin as he makes his exit, listening to the militant's comrades infiltrate the building. The chicken's headless body, running desperately in pursuit of vengeance.

As he exits the compound, he hears a woman shouting. He turns to find a man has been dragged from his home and forced onto his knees by a militant, his wife pleading and clutching their crying children _Baba Baba Baba_ —

They shoot him in the head and the woman shrieks, her grief bowing her over for only a moment before the militant fires several more rounds into her and the children. In the end, they all lie in a heap. They probably won't get a burial.

He would have composed another forty texts to John that night, but he isn't sure who the doctor would be receiving a text from. He isn't Sherlock Holmes anymore; he has no name, no face, no soul by which he can be recognized. He allows women and children to be punished for murders he committed and that's not the kind of person John Watson would want to know.

He's been away from John for 36,820,000 seconds. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

* * *

"He's in _Serbia_!" the man cries, face paper white as he stares down Sherlock's gun, "Just have some fucking mercy and shoot me before he finds out I told you!"

Sherlock draws himself up, puts the safety back on his gun and holsters it. As he strides away from the panting arms dealer, he kicks aside the berretta he had wrenched from his grasp in the fight.

" _Please_!" the man sobs after him, but he doesn't look back; he doesn't even take note of the sound of scuffling feet until he hears the unmistakable crack of a discharged bullet.

When he whips around, it is to see the arms dealer crumbling back to wet pavement, the berretta falling from his hand.

"I didn't pull the trigger," he insists to no one. " _I didn't pull the trigger._ "

 _Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick._

* * *

Ridiculous.

He is losing his staring contest with the porcelain bin of his toilet, and John is kneeling next to him, rubbing circles into his back and muttering some poetry or another about how Sherlock is _safe_ -moron, of course he is. Of course there's no reason why his hands are shaking and it feels as though all of the oxygen has been hoovered from the room. The idea is ridiculous.

"John, I am perfectly capable of handling my own flashbacks," he claims, spitting the phrase flashbacks like it tastes foul. Or perhaps that is just the film his bile has left over his tongue. He needs to brush his teeth, but the sink is all the way up there.

"Sherlock," John's voice is sickeningly gentle, God just go awaaaaaaaaaaay, "it's the fact that you had one at all that's got me worried."

"Well you needn't worry about me, Mother," Sherlock sneers, but the fact that he can't quite look his friend in the eye takes a bit of the edge off of his words.

Worried. Who on earth gave anyone the right to worry about him? It is his father, trying to convince him to keep in touch more because "She _worries_." It is Mycroft, trying to buy a look through John's eyes before the man had even gotten to know Sherlock properly-undoubtedly trying to see if he was slipping back into the arms of his favorite drugs, making sure he was alright, _worrying_. People worry about him because they think he needs to be taken care of, which is positively disgusting.

John just kept rubbing his back. "It's perfectly normal to have flashbacks when you've had a traumatic experience-"

"It's not as though I haven't dealt with this sort of thing before!" he bit venomously, and he regrets doing so less than a second later as John's hands stills.

There is a year's worth of silence, and then, in a voice that is far too calm, John says, "Come again?"

Damn. _Damn._

"I have dealt with victims of various crimes, John," Pointless. "More than a few have undergone-"

"Bullshit." Dammit.

He switches tracks at record speed. "I once solved a case by proving that the perpetrator was not in fact a victim due to the inaccurate symptoms of physical trauma-"

" _Sherlock_."

Mrs. Hudson must have taught him how to do that.

Staring determinedly at the bin over which he's kneeling, he mutters something along the lines of "You would not be entirely wrong in assuming that I may or may not have undergone an indeterminate period of physical debilitation and/or mental duress quite possibly during the expanse of time during which you were under the impression that I was less than alive," stumbling over his words purposefully in the hopes that it would distract John enough to buy him more time.

John nods in his peripheral vision. "Lather, rinse, repeat. Got it." he says.

Sherlock _tsks_ and begins focusing on getting his limbs to cooperate for long enough to help him flee the bathroom. No, nonsense. Why should he have to _flee_ his own flat? It is John who should be leaving. John should leave right now, before he can figure out what Sherlock has let slip and before Sherlock has to see the look on his face when he does.

John's hand reaches out to grip his shoulder again, more tentatively this time, but Sherlock still has to grit his teeth to keep from flinching.

"Mind repeating that in English?" John asks gently.

He'd flush himself down the toilet if he could. He briefly considers telling John to go away again, but God, the prospect of facing an empty flat in his current state is even worse. How utterly _pathetic_.

"There was...a branch of Moriarty's network centered in Serbia that more or less discovered my intentions. They...well, they were hardly hospitable." He blows out a long breath through pursed lips and waits.

John is utterly, painfully silent. His hand stills on Sherlock's back, and Sherlock is grateful for the barrier of his shirt because if he was touching his skin this surely would have gotten ugly by now. Then, John does something shocking: he heaves a great, put-upon sigh and says, "So I was right, then."

"You'll have to clarify, John," Sherlock snaps, stomach still roiling and head still pounding and patience thinner than Mycroft's hair. "You're right about very few things, so specificity is key if this momentous event is to be recorded properly."

"Oh, ta," John says, resuming his backrub. "I was right, though," he continues, "This reaction isn't normal for you. You don't lose it like that over a few thugs who got punch-happy."

 _Maybe I do, now_ , he thinks bitterly. _I can't be sure, John. You don't know. You_ can't _know._

But John is right, and it feels like the ultimate betrayal. This is his _mind_ , the thing he values above absolutely everything, and it has turned on him. It is overloading at the slightest provocation, digesting itself, warping until his transport is so far out of his control he can't even hold his hands still anymore.

What is he going to do about the Work when he's like this? Is he to flinch every time someone touches his skin? Break down whenever someone takes a swing at him?

His mind is unreliable. The windows of his Palace have shattered, the foundation cracked. Vines have begun to creep their way up the walls, tendrils of doubt seeping into his thoughts, and it feels as though one good gust could bring the whole thing to ground.

John is still talking, and it is a spectacular effort not to snap at him again. "I was pretty sure this was the result of something worse," he's saying gently. "Something you weren't telling me. And I was right, wasn't I?"

"Very astute, John," Sherlock grumbles.

Sherlock can hear him replaying the time he has been back, searching for the signs of trauma he should have seen before but didn't, because Sherlock has done everything in his power to squash them. And he can _feel_ the weight dropping in the man's stomach as he goes back over the night Sherlock knew his mind would jump to.

"So..." _Don't say it_. "How recently after that did I first see you?" _He said it._

He wants desperately to lie, but the words "A bit less than a week" slip from between his lips unbidden, sinking into the toilet basin to join the contents of his stomach.

"Oh, _Jesus_ ," and the hand on his shoulder is gone, moving instead to grip John's hair as the doctor falls back against the tiled wall behind him. Mercifully, Sherlock's limbs choose that moment to regain mobility, and he scrambles upwards-embarrassed by the fact that he needs to use the sink basin as leverage-swiping a bottle of mouthwash on the way out. He won't look at John's face. Won't see the guilt he knows it will spell.

"Oh, stop with the guilt trip," he says in a brave attempt at dismissal, "There was no way you could have known."

"No, there wasn't, because I never _asked_ ," John has followed him into the sitting room, hands still tangled in his hair and something like horror etched into every line of his face. Sherlock takes a large swig of mouthwash to avoid replying.

"You'd been in captivity less than a week before, and _Jesus_ , Sherlock! The first thing I did was attempt to _strangle you_!"

 _You were angry_ , Sherlock wants to say. _And quite justifiably so._ And why should he have been concerned about what Sherlock was up to while he was away? He'd had a fiancée, a new job...quite frankly, it is a wonder he's currently here at all. He should have stayed away, should have married that woman instead of turning up on Sherlock's doorstep after a month of silence with a suitcase and a mouth that refused to smile.

"God knows," John is still going, and Sherlock realizes far too late that he had chosen a bad time to have a mouthful of alcohol. "God only _knows_ if they did that too. Jesus, they probably water-boarded you, they always do-"

 _Sounds like you speak from experience._

"-and I shoved you down and nearly broke your nose, because I was too damn focused on _my_ anger, _my_ hurt, to realize that you'd been sodding _tortured_ -"

 _You're going to go bald if you keep tugging at your hair like that._

Finally ridding himself of the mouthwash, which has begun to burn a bit, he snaps, "What would you have done if you'd known? _Hugged_ me?" He tries to sneer, but it doesn't quite come across the way he intends. "You wouldn't have been angry, John. Not properly."

"Oh, right, well, isn't that what's really important?" John throws his hands up in a gesture of exasperation. Good. But then he makes a sort of aborted gesture towards Sherlock's chest region and says, "Shirt. Off."

 _No._

"Really, John, people will _talk_ -"

" _Now_." An order. He's been given an order, Captain Watson voice and all. John has ordered Sherlock to do very little during the time that they've known one another, and when that Voice comes out, one doesn't exactly refuse.

 _Please don't make me._

He would kill for John. Has killed for him. Has killed _himself_ for him. There is very little left in the world that Sherlock would not do, should John Watson ask—save perhaps buy milk, but John does that now without asking anyway. But even as his shirt rustles against his fingers, which are creeping downwards as slowly as possible, he wishes desperately that he had the ability to say no his friend.

That is what got him in this mess in the first place. Blown wide open to the disgusting cocktail of chemical reactions that ordinary people labeled as _emotions_ and forced to watch as his best friend's respect for him slowly dwindled into pity. Because he can't say no. Not to John.

 _"What were they thinking?"_

 _"Probably something about making friends."_

 _"Oh yes. 'Friends'. Of course, you go in for that sort of thing now."_

Yes, and he's beginning to see why Mycroft didn't. Perhaps he'd have been better suited with a goldfish.

The shirt puddles to the floor in a heap of white fabric, and John swallows hard. Sherlock doesn't bother looking down, because he knows exactly what sort of patterns have been carved into his chest and abdomen, can map out the constellations of bruises his captors created when they felt least like using their imaginations. They'd been dull, so dull, trying to use the most common methods of brutality to break him...even Konevski and his butcher's kit had just barely gotten creative, though it is he who is responsible for the embroidery that dances across his skin in thin scars, just barely darker than the pallid skin they mar.

Three strides forward. Hand raised, hovering. Hesitating. It is John who won't look at Sherlock now, but Sherlock isn't about to complain.

Two fingers lightly brush the most gruesome of his souvenirs, which rests just below his left clavicle and will probably help Sherlock to predict the weather once he got older. If he made it to that state of life. It is looking less and less likely given his lifestyle.

John was shot in the shoulder. Calls it his "bad shoulder", and constantly rubs it, especially after witnessing someone else's shoulder get damaged, as though the pain of another served as a reminder of his own. Once, in the midst of a particularly spirited tussle with a fugitive he had apprehended, Sherlock had been allowed to appreciate the brilliant power the man can pack into a single kick and received a broken collarbone for his trouble. John had rubbed his shoulder every time he looked at the sling Sherlock had whined about having to wear, and didn't stop until the cast came off (prematurely; Sherlock sat at the kitchen table and power-sawed it off while John was out getting milk). So it is hardly surprising that that is the first injury he took note of.

"What's this then?" he asks, failing spectacularly at sounding offhand.

 _White hot white hot white hot bright red pain bright red skin skin painted red crimson scarlet burgundy flesh yielding to serrated metal that screeches as it jarred with the ribs beneath_ Sherlock shrugs. "Stabbed me with a letter opener." he remarks.

"They what?"

" _Stabbed me_ , John," Sherlock snaps. "I was hardly there to play Cluedo."

The fingers drop from his scar as John chuckles at that. "Yeah, well," he says, "if I had to play Cluedo with you one more time I'd probably stab you as well."

He is joking around again, and Sherlock could leap for joy. But the smile fades swiftly as the older man circles around to gaze at Sherlock's back, to stare at the criss-cross of lacerations that have torn his skin to ribbons, the more recent ones still grotesquely sewn shut with the most indiscreet possible surgical string. He hadn't had the strength to put up a good enough fight when they had handed him over to whatever nine-year-old that had just been made a doctor; he would probably never get rid of the scars that would result from the sloppy stitching.

"You would have done a much better job," he says aloud. John gives a startled "Hm?" that shows he has been riding a completely different train of thought.

"The stitches..." he clarifies, twisting a bit to gaze at John over his shoulder. His friend's expression would be unreadable if Sherlock either didn't known him so well or hadn't made a business out of reading people; he can read John's horror in the twitch of his jaw, the slight widening of his eyes, the way his neck is strained as though he's being strangled, as though it is written across the man's forehead, which is creased ever so slightly at the brow. He can see John's restraint, too—he's trying with all of his might to keep his expression stony instead of throwing something out a window. Afraid that would upset Sherlock? If he thought that, he's far from correct. Sherlock would have welcomed violence. It is when John Watson gets quiet that Sherlock gets restless.

"...you would have been neater about them." he finishes lamely.

John ignores him, reaching out two fingers to trace the most prominent of the scars, which spans from his shoulder diagonally to the dip of his hip. His touch is warm.

"Jesus," he breathes.

"While I'm sure he would appreciate the strength of your faith, I doubt that the man himself was on hand at the time." Sherlock replies, shifting a little. John ignores that, too, his hand dropping from Sherlock's skin. For the love of God, _smile_.

But the doctor turns a deaf ear to Sherlock's silent plea, clearing his throat the way he does when trying to maintain his stony soldier appearance.

"And this," he says in a tight voice, hands fluttering in a vague gesture between Sherlock's back and the bathroom. "How badly did you have to deal with this before I came back?" He clears his throat again and adds, "Alone?"

Don't.

Don't do that to yourself. Don't.

 _I swallowed it, John_ , he wants to say. _I swallowed it so that you wouldn't pity me but now every little_ fucking _thing is making it come back up and I don't know what to do John_ help me _John._

But it's not as though John likes Sherlock for his personality; John has always admired his mind above all else. He became intrigued by Sherlock's mysterious ways and rapid-fire deductions—it's not as though he's stayed all this time because Sherlock is normal. It's not even a cruelty, that's just the way of it. So Sherlock is absolutely certain that, should John learn that his Palace is disintegrating and he may very well be unable to solve a petty crime without having a breakdown, he would lose interest with record speed.

And it wouldn't be his fault—take away Sherlock's mind and he is nothing but a cranky man with abhorrent manners. John could go anywhere to find unremarkable people, probably with much nicer personas.

Worst of all, John would definitely not appreciate hearing that the most violent of repercussions occurred directly after he got home on the night he returned to John—the night the good doctor spent periodically assaulting him.

* * *

He fucks up. There's no other verb, no other term in English or Spanish or Russian or French or any more of the dozen languages Sherlock is fluent in, to accurately describe the situation he has gotten himself into other than that he has _fucked_ up.

He should have seen it the moment they called him into the dingy, underground office that took far too many winding hallways and downward slopes to get to, but he could sense that this was the last link, could _taste_ how close he was to going home, and now he's going to pay.

His ears are ringing a perfect high G from when his head was slammed against the desk he had moments ago been sitting behind, and now his head lolls back as they drag him by the arms out of the office. His feet scrabble for purchase but it's a pathetic attempt and he stares up at passing bulbs hanging from the ceiling as he passes under them, blurry and over-bright.

They don't immediately string him up the way he is when Mycroft finds him.

Instead, the moment he awakes to find himself lying on a moldy mattress, arms bound in an impossibly high position at the middle of his back and far too much fabric sealed into his mouth with gaffer tape, their intentions become abundantly clear.

As he is straddled he absolutely does not allow himself to panic, but that doesn't mean he won't fight. He growls against the gag, kicks viciously, bucks like a bull—but with his arms rendered so very immobile he has very little leverage. In fact, his unwillingness only seems to spur the man on from his position atop Sherlock—he fists one hand in the detective's hair ( _calloused hands worked as a mechanic)_ and _fucks_ into him with relish. His skin is sliding filthily against Sherlock's, other hand yanking on his bound arms so hard he fears breakage, and Sherlock rails against the indignity, flails, bucks, bites down on the cloth in his mouth. He tastes gun oil and semen and shame.

After the man has pulled out of him with a satisfied grunt, he stomps down on Sherlock's ribcage ( _size twelve boot no traction_ ) hard enough that the detective feels at least one crack.

They leave him like that, freezing in Serbian winter, for the next three hours, until a different man waltzes in (s _ize nine boot shined recently traction for snow not from here_ ) and gives him the same treatment, dealing him a harsh kick to the head when he has reached completion.

Rinse, repeat, ad nauseum, every three hours on the hour. By the fourth visit, three ribs are broken and he can feel a loose tooth bleeding into his gums. Somewhere around the thirty-hour mark a spark of sorts kicked into a flame and he resumed his previously dwindled fighting, grunting into his gag and scratching at his captor, but the man simply wrenches his bound arm up with a sickening _crack_ and Sherlock does not scream. He does not.

 _Did you think you could intimidate them from your spot on the floor?_ John sneers at him.

Wrong. No. John is not here. John is home. John is _safe_.

 _Look at yourself. You're quite literally fucked._

 _Yes_ , he wants to roar, _for you! Here I am, John! The great Sherlock Holmes, quite literally_ fucked _so that you can carry on with your life. This is what I've given for you. This is what I've become._

He's spared John's response by the arrival of his next violation, though, and he's a sick sort of grateful.

In the end, he counts eleven times before they switch methods. Eleven different men, eleven different shoe sizes, eleven different _cocks_ , eleven times he's been left with semen trickling down his thigh and the sound of a zipper being done back up. Sherlock burrows his head into the dirty mattress in an attempt to bring order to his head, but all he does is smell his own blood, his own sweat, his own defeat.

He can practically feel the weight of his brother's gaze on him, can hear John's disparaging comments and un-John-like taunts _you got yourself into this, genius, get yourself out._

But it's been nearly five days since they last allowed him to sleep and he can't even tell whose skin is on his anymore—only that he feels vulgar, repugnant, gutted like a fish.

There's a vague demand to know who he's working for as the next man enters, but even in his sleepless state Sherlock can hear how little he actually cares. Besides, he's already calculated a good 79% chance that they're sure they have a Croatian spy on their hands and need not question further.

There's also a 100% chance that they care mainly about breaking him, he thinks, watching the glee on the man's face as he unrolls what looks like a butcher's kit.

* * *

After, when he has been settled back into Baker St and tossed around by John Watson a good deal, Mycroft rings him in the middle of the day.

"If you were to receive a bouquet," his brother says airily, "of eleven severed phalli, do you believe you would have a negative reaction?"

Sherlock laughs—actually, honest-to-god _laughs_ at that—and says "No, brother dear, but I think you can permit the poor sods to keep them all the same."

He hangs up without making a single remark about Mycroft's weight.

* * *

John's brow has furrowed to a point where it looks it may permanently stay that way. He must have read something he didn't like in Sherlock's silence, but Sherlock is too afraid of giving himself away to conjure a response.

"You're trying to figure out how to tell me you haven't been coping," John notes. It isn't a question.

 _Iswalloweditiswalloweditiswallowedit_ "There's nothing to—"

"Maybe," John says, and his voice is sharp as glass as sharp as shattered ceramic "you would find yourself better off if you'd _stop lying to me_ ,Sherlock."

He hasn't felt this cornered since there was a semi-automatic aimed at him.

John must see it , because he heaves an enormous, probablysupposedtobecalming breath and leans on his knuckles on the kitchen table. He stares at a chemical burn from one of Sherlock's experiments as though it is personally responsible for their current situation.

"Okay," he tells the table, "so we've got a few facts. The first is that I am a complete and total absolute arsehole—"

"John," Sherlock scoffs, "don't be—"

"The second," John plows on as though Sherlock hasn't spoken, "is that you've been to hell and back and thought you could just shove it all down and pretend you'd deleted it—"

"I _did_ , John, you really don't need to—"

"—the third is that this case has made it all come back up," John says with certainty, and Sherlock falls silent. Somewhere outside, a truck driver slams on the brakes.

John lifts his eyes to gaze at Sherlock now, and he looks so unbearably sad and it's _wrong_. Sherlock can feel it all come crashing down, can feel John taking a sledgehammer to his façade and the sick feeling pooling in his gut has nothing to do with his headache anymore.

There's an interstellar moment where he and John simply _look_ at one another for the first time in too long, reach out for one another across the abyss that's been growing between them since _"not dead"_ , and for the first time in too long Sherlock feels like John _sees_ him in that way he did sometimes before Sherlock had to leave. And Sherlock is terrified to his core but simultaneously he feels such a dizzying sweep of _relief_ that he could cry.

"The fourth is that you're not taking any more cases until you talk to me about this," John says, and Sherlock freezes. He adds, "Doctor's orders."

Oh, abso _lutely_ not.

"I—"

"Not arguing this."

" _John_ —"

"It's late," John finally steps back from the table and flexes his ( _steady_ ) hands. "You should go back to bed; your head's probably killing you. I'm going to get changed and I'll have some broth ready when you wake up." He sidles past Sherlock towards his room, and Sherlock wants to splutter and continue the argument but he fears he may vomit if he opens his mouth again.

He does as he's told.

Just as he reaches the door to his bedroom, though, a quiet "Hey," draws him back. He turns to see John paused in the doorway, hesitating.

"I…" John licks his lips, twitches his fingers as though he wants to reach out, "I'm _here_ , Sherlock," he says; "I know I haven't been, but…but I am now."

Sherlock wrinkles his nose. _Haven't been—?_ "What on earth do you mean, you haven't been here?" he asks, "You've been living here."

John's chin dips, and his shoulders shake a little, but he's smiling so Sherlock thinks it's probably that quiet laugh he does.

"Nothing," he chuckles, "nothing at all." And the grin on his face only just touches his eyes, but it's a start. It's a start.

* * *

They don't discuss it again until Lestrade texts, and that's not until after his stitches have come out.

John's spent the entire time varying between leading Sherlock through the recovery process with the firm no-nonsense approach of a parent and staring at Sherlock when he thinks the detective can't see, concern lining his brow and making him look gut-wrenchingly sad.

Sherlock—naively—thinks that maybe John has forgotten about his fourth conclusion, and so when the text from Lestrade comes he bounds into his bedroom to dress and prays that he's right.

He should have noticed something was off when he registered that John was sitting in his chair, making no move to get ready to leave and watching Sherlock with a set mouth. It's been weeks cooped up in the flat, though, and Sherlock can feel the energy of a new case sparking his synapses to life after far too long a period of stagnation so he dons his coat, glances at John, and says hopefully, "Lestrade texted."

And John—good, solid, jumper-wearing John—says: "No."

Sherlock stops cold for half a second, but he isn't deterred.

"If you don't want to come then I'll—"

" _No_ , Sherlock."

"Oh, really, John, the concussion is long gone—"

"Were you listening to me at all?" John is on his feet now and that's dangerous, that means he's got the ground well and truly beneath him and if he feels the need to stand for this argument it means he's probably going to win.

Sherlock scoffs, but he can't stop his fingers from fiddling with his lapel. "You'll have to be more specific, John," he says, "I very rarely listen to you; to which occasion were you referring?"

If he stood a fighting chance here that comment would make John's ( _Croatia-water-blue_ ) eyes flash dangerously, but instead the doctor does something much worse. He puts his hands on his hips and the look he gives Sherlock is _withering_ , and Sherlock nearly fashions a white flag out of his bed sheet then and there.

Even though he doesn't, his efforts have only barely gotten off the ground before the hand slams into the doorway in front of him and he doesn't want to flinch but he flinches anyway and John sees it and his face goes soft and it's over. It's over.

* * *

He doesn't even remember how he makes it out the first time, only running running running with Mycroft in his ear _you know you can go faster, this is just laziness._

"Make it back to me," says a physical manifestation of John as he runs past. He doesn't even register that it was actually _John_ he just saw until he's a few more feet ahead, and when he does it's such a shock that he skids on the frozen forest soil.

It doesn't matter, though, because that's the exact moment he hears a semi-automatic go off at his feet and he knows he's caught.

When they've hustled him back inside, they give him an actual plate of food littered with the slimmest pickings he's ever seen, but Sherlock couldn't care less. It's been a week since they last fed him and he practically licks the plate, uncaring of his audience as Konevski sits on his haunches in front of him.

"I admire your tenacity," the man with the butcher kit-whose name Sherlock has learned to be Konevski-says as though Sherlock is not trembling and clearly struggling to focus his gaze.

"If you told him you'd forced your best friend to watch you commit suicide," John says, "do you think he'd admire you then?"

But just then the man glances from Sherlock's plate back to his face and smiles, feral.

"Done?" he asks politely, and before Sherlock can respond he snatches the plate from his hands and shatters it on the floor.

"Oh, dear," Konevski says with false sincerity, delicately picking up a large piece of ceramic as three goons pin Sherlock flat onto his back, "what to do," he tuts. Then he grasps Sherlock's flailing feet in an iron grip and slits them both down the middle, _so you don't try to run again._

* * *

"Go on, then."

It is meant to be a gentle urge, but he hears the impatience nonetheless—hears the rubbing of fabric against fabric that means his leg is bouncing with restless energy. He doesn't move from his stance at the window, nor does he stop fiddling with the strings of the violin he hasn't touched in months, but he doesn't have to in order to feel the pair of eyes boring holes into the back of his head. People tend to do that.

"Sherlock."

Ah. There is the quiet plea, the _I'm here for you, let me in_. He regrets giving in to his friend's attempt at therapy, but he doubts he has much of a choice. He regrets making friends at all, let alone growing to love another person to the degree that he loved John. Hadn't he learned his lesson on that subject during primary school?

There's an itching under his skin and he knows he won't get far with his leg still healing but he can feel it in his bones; the urge to _run run don't do this to yourself don't do this to me let me out let me out let me—_

 _Alone protects me_. That is one of the last things he said to John before he had to leave and by God he has never heard it ring more true than he does right now. If he didn't loved John the way he does, he wouldn't have given a damn that someone was aiming a gun at his head, wouldn't have had to feel like his chest was caving in as he stood before an empty grave—perhaps he would have faked his death and gone underground to dismantle Moriarty's network, but now he's being forced to dig it all up again because someone is concerned about him and it's so, so stupid because he wants nothing more than to bury it forever but for the life of him he can't say no.

If he didn't loved John the way he does, perhaps he would have avoided this whole mess. If he didn't loved John the way he does.

But he does love John. Damn him, but he does.

And so John Watson is going to get his way—because that is what he does—so Sherlock reluctantly lowers his violin and turns to where the doctor is sitting in his chair, that look of eternal patience and concern plastered on his face in a way that makes Sherlock feel like a child attempting to explain where it hurts to the pediatrician.

"You've read my file. You know what happened." He states curtly, knowing even as he speaks that it won't be enough to make John go away.

But the older man reaches under his chair and brings out a thick file folder with the words "Holmes Service 2012-2014" scrawled across the front. It lands with a dull thud on the coffee table between them. Unopened. Untouched.

Sherlock glances from the folder to John's face and back. His side of the story, then. He should have guessed as much.

"I don't want to read something some other bloke wrote about what my best friend went through," John says with the determination that usually accompanied a case. _Am I back to being your best friend, then?_ "I want to hear it from you, and don't spare me the details."

"You realize that this is putting me in a situation in which I am highly uncomfortable—" Sherlock starts.

"Only because you don't like dealing with emotions," John fires back.

"I do not—"

"Don't say it." There is a warning in his tone now. "Don't even say it."

Regret seeps into Sherlock's mind once more; John's face on the cab ride home the day Sherlock lost it is seared into his memory—hands fisted against his legs so they wouldn't shake, jaw twitching in a manner that didn't precisely look healthy. What John doesn't understand is that simply because dwelling on the details of his most recent "case" has triggered an unfortunate reaction does not mean that there is any emotion attached to the incident. He's gripping the back of the nearest chair now, so hard that his knuckles have turned white because he does not feel it he does not _he does not he does_ not **.**

 _Service._

"Is that what they're calling it?" he asked, slowly releasing his grip on the chair back and settling into the one across from John instead. He watched the older man's brow furrow for a moment, but then he glances at the name printed on the file cover and comprehension dawns without having to ask.

"So it didn't feel like service, then," he prompts.

Sherlock is silent for a moment, stretching out his senses so that he can hear Mrs. Hudson making her fourth cup of tea downstairs and the couple arguing across the street about who was supposed to pick up the dry cleaning, voices drifting up into the air to twist with the ever-present smell of carbon dioxide emissions from some enormous truck or another. London is constantly in motion, making it so easy to be swept away and forget that just a month ago the sound of car horns was replaced with the sound of gunshots.

"No," he says, "service makes it sound like a voluntary undertaking of a mission with some agency backing you. This was…" he flounders for a moment, watching John's face soften into a look that has his gut twisting, "This felt like I was completely and utterly alone unless I was pursuing or being pursued or—" it catches in his throat, "being caught, and then it was a bit difficult to be alone because there was always _someone_ asking or doing or touching—"

"Sherlock—"

" _I don't want to do this_ ," he insists, and it's absolutely inexcusable that his voice shakes.

* * *

"You do know why it's me you keep seeing right?" John asks from where he lounges against the wall. Sherlock darts his gaze over to him, but it's a bit difficult to turn his head considering Konevski has it in a stranglehold.

He opens his mouth to respond but his vision is rapidly narrowing to a single point and all he manages is a very unattractive, fishlike gaping.

"Oh, don't be so _obvious_ , you berk, I know why you're hallucinating," John sneers, pushing off the wall to stroll over to where Sherlock lay, "the last time you passed out from exhaustion was, what, nine days ago? Small wonder you're having a psychotic break. No, why are you seeing _me_?"

Konevski releases him and he coughs and coughs and coughs, but John completely ignores that as he leans his hands on his knees to peer into Sherlock's (watering) eyes.

"Guilt," John supplies breezily as Sherlock wheezes, "You feel guilty over leaving me behind. Over jumping in front of me. Over letting me _fucking_ grieve, Sherlock," he spits. "You keep dredging up this image of me trying to get some sort absolution but all you keep hearing is the truth; what a monster you've turned into, how fucking badly you're making me hate you."

Konevski wrenches his head back again, thick arm roping around his neck, biceps flexing against his trachea.

"—you're not—" he manages.

"—Your real John?" John asks, "No, but I'm what you know is waiting for you if you ever get yourself out of this mess."

 _No._ His John will understand. _His John will understand._

"Sherlock Holmes," John says, rising to stand over him. "The self-diagnosed sociopath who simply _doesn't care_." He laughs once without humor. "Who's distanced himself so much from the spectrum of human emotion that his brain needs to conjure up the image of another person to tell him when he's feeling guilty."

John leans in close and strokes a hand over his cheek, but he doesn't actually feel it. Can't feel it. Can't feel his own fingers.

He has been away from John for—

…for…

…tick….tick…..t—

 _Tick Tick Boom Broadway show_ it's too late to screw _screw head flathead star head stars stars John says stars matter John matters_ make it back to me _John I learned the constellations for you—_

"What might we deduce about his heart?" John breathes.

When the blackness finally takes off its shoes and gets comfortable, it's a relief akin to morphine.

* * *

John doesn't react to that part at all, but that could be because Sherlock doesn't tell him about it.

* * *

When they do string him up, it's to bring out a long, thin whip, and he has to take to reciting the periodical table under his breath to keep from shouting as his skin is effectively shredded.

Over the next four days, he counts over four hundred lashes; he'd be impressed by the man's stamina if this wasn't so bloody awful. After that he loses count, though, and by then he's been reduced to screaming random syllables that don't even sound like elements so it doesn't matter. Approximately twenty-four cigarettes have been put out on his torso and back, he's been sent to the brink of asphyxiation sixty-eight times, he's been doused with so much freezing water it's a medical marvel he hasn't yet succumbed to hypothermia, Konevski has made an absolute wreck of everything from the neck down, and it would all be so unbearably _mundane_ if they hadn't taken away his right to sleep.

He's (probably) dealt with worse—hell, he's probably even inflicted worse on his own transport for the sake of an experiment when John was unavailable or still pissed off from Baskerville. But now he genuinely can't remember the last time he slept, and so every lash, burn, cut, bruise, all of it has been allowed to sink into the foundation of his mind palace and fester there.

It only stops because there's apparently someone important coming in today and Konevski wants to show off what he can do to Sherlock _with my bare hands._

Sherlock would react to that in some way, but he's honestly too exhausted to care a whit about what his captors do anymore. John has become a permanent fixture, leering at him from the corner and occasionally shouting abuse, and Sherlock takes it hanging doubled over, the only thing keeping him upright the chains manacled around his wrists.

Konevski is already hailing punches on him when the important man enters. There's some half-arsed demand to know who he works for, but Sherlock knows that that's just for show because they haven't asked him that in _weeks_.

"Remember sleep?" Konevski asks, picking up a crowbar.

 _Well, no, but then if you knew my sleeping habits before this mess you'd be appalled._

His captor begins to swing the crowbar, but just before it makes contact Sherlock catches a whiff of…

Of…

 _Expensive leather recently cleaned car interior climate controlled built-in bar alcohol alcohol generous helping of brandy orange parfum Grand Marnier Quintessence no stomach for violence? Impossible wouldn't be in this business otherwise which means either spy or sentimental spy no good I couldn't get in as a spy he'd have been found out which leaves sentimental why sentimental this reminds him of someone of who who could he know someone who looks like me someone from Croatia someone from England is it me is it me is it me—_

 _…is that…_

 _Is that_ cake icing _?_

 _MYCROFT_

He breathes in a shock of freezing air and feels it reanimate every nerve in his body.

And everything slows down, down, down, down, down—

 _Stops._

" _Honestly_ , Sherlock," Mycroft says, and it's Mycroft's voice but the man sitting in front of him hasn't opened his mouth.

Sherlock is standing before him, surveying the frozen room from the outside, and watching Konevski's crowbar hover just shy of his abdomen. Good god, he looks dead.

"What on _earth_ have you been doing this entire time?" Mycroft demands, enormous nose high as he strides over to where Konevski stands. "Have you taken _any_ time to survey your surroundings, or did you simply spread your legs for everyone and wait for me to come rescue you like a damsel in distress?"

It's a peculiar thing, how badly he wants to strangle even the hallucination of his brother. "I—"

"Don't bother," Mycroft dismisses, raking his eyes over Konevski. "You could have seen this _weeks_ ago, the moment he walked into the room really. Look at the haircut, the way he holds himself, the tattoo behind his ear."

 _Military—correction: Navy._ Sherlock's heart sinks with the realization that he missed that, cheeks burning at the prospect of needing his _brother_ to point it out to him.

"Very good," Mycroft's praise is dripping with condescension, "now look at his hand."

"Forgive me for being a touch more concerned with what's in his hands," Sherlock snarls, eyeing the crowbar.

"Oh, don't be so unutterably _thick_ ," Mycroft snaps back, nose wrinkling, "if you weren't such a _stupid little boy_ this wouldn't have even _gotten_ so far. Now, _look. At. His. Hand_."

Sherlock looks at his hand, and…dammit. There's a wedding ring. How in _god's name_ had he missed that?

"And he's wearing it now," Mycroft supplies, "which means—"

"He doesn't care if it gets dirty or ruined," Sherlock finishes; the ring is filthy, mostly covered in his own blood but then again, so is the entire bloody cell by now. "Unhappy marriage, affair—"

"On both sides," Mycroft interrupts, "Him while in the navy—look, the tattoo is faded, hasn't been refreshed—he wants to forget about his time there but can't afford a removal."

"And her…" Sherlock leans in to sniff at Konevski's sweat-soaked shirt and comes back with—

"Wood," says Mycroft, ambling around the cell and gazing at the walls as though he is in an art museum. "Wood shavings and polish, and silk. Can't find that combination anywhere except—"

"A coffin," Sherlock breathes, "coffin-maker. Fitting, considering he'll probably need one once Konevski finds out."

Mycroft is gazing at him in that way that means he sees something Sherlock doesn't want him to. The silence goes on for far too long, but Sherlock will most assuredly not squirm under the scrutiny of his imaginary brother.

"When I let you out of these chains," his brother says idly, flicking a hand at Sherlock's frozen body, "you're going to collapse. I'm going to have my operatives storm the place, incarcerate everyone responsible for this, and then bustle you onto a helicopter where you will almost immediately go into cardiac arrest due to shock. And that, brother dear…that is going to make it the largest effort of my life to prevent myself from sending us into war with Serbia."

Mycroft strolls back around the cell to stand before Sherlock, ducking under the chain that holds his right arm aloft.

"I had to get very, very drunk to be able to set foot in this building; you can smell it on me," he says, staring at Konevski with his lips pressed into a bloodless line, "You'll accuse me of enjoying it to keep up appearances, I know, but do try not think that this is anything but the worst day of my life."

Sherlock opens his mouth—to say what, he doesn't know—but the colors of this reality are already warping, and with a flash-bulb-like burst of light he's slammed back into his own body and a world of forgotten pain.

His mouth is moving—sand from Afghanistan still lodged in his lungs, voice gravelly from disuse and screaming, and the crowbar has paused inches away from his body. Then, Konevski is swearing, storming from the room, and his brother is getting up from his seat and Back to Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes.

He won't in front of Mycroft, but good lord, is he close to crying just then.

 _John. John. I'm coming home._

* * *

He doesn't remember anyone ordering for takeaway, but it sits in bags on the kitchen table anyway. There's a brief flash of memory somewhere in the middle of his talking where his voice may have cracked and perhaps he may have begun to lose it a bit, because John's hands had gripped his shoulders and he'd said "Okay, mate, that's fine, we can take a break. Do you want Chinese?"

Sherlock had ignored the request and carried on talking (it's likely he couldn't stop once he started), but he guesses John must have put the order through online or something anyway.

Now, John glances ruefully at the bags on the table.

"You're not going to eat a bite of that, are you?" he asks sadly.

Sherlock very nearly smiles "No," he admits.

But John walks over to the table anyway and begins unpacking it, turning his back so that Sherlock can't see his expression. Purposefully? Most likely.

There is a minute or so in which the only sound in the flat is that of rustling paper and plastic hitting the table as John sets out the containers with deliberate care. Sherlock feels his silence like a lead weight in the pit of his stomach.

"Is that..." John starts suddenly, voice tight as he spun in an aborted motion to face Sherlock again. His face is unreadable, but the muscles in his neck are taut. "Is that what goes through your head every time you make a deduction?" he finishes finally. "People telling you what a moron you are, throwing shit in your face like you should have seen it before?"

Sherlock feels his brow furrow, confused by what John has chosen to take away from that. "Only when I don't fully understand it, or if I missed something." So what?

"There's always something," John mutters, turning back to the food. "You said that yourself the night after we met."

 _But what does that have to do with anything?_ he almost asks. It's how he solves problems. How he survives. He can't see why that has John looking like he wants to break something expensive.

"There's no problem with-" he starts.

" _Yes_ , there is." John almost yells, turning back around. There is fire in his eyes, passion, humanity. "There is a problem with that level of self-deprecation and there is _definitely_ a problem with you accepting it as normal."

"It's not-"

"Sherlock," John moves to grip the back of his chair as though he needs something to ground himself. "Your work...Your _mind_ is something that scientists are going to write research papers about for the next thousand years."

Sherlock snorts, but rolling his eyes would egg John on and the man seems to be on a roll as it is.

"You are…" John pauses, the hand he has raised to point at Sherlock closing into a fist as he licks his lips the way he does when carefully choosing what to say. "You are something to be marveled at, Sherlock." he says firmly, as though the heavens could open up and God himself could descend and tell him that Sherlock was unremarkable and he still wouldn't buy it. "And I can't accept that you spend half your time allowing voices in your head to tell you you're anything short of fantastic."

Where did this come from?

He can't help but reel at the sudden turnaround. Half a month ago John was spending every second either glaring at or ignoring Sherlock, and that was when he wasn't shouting or storming from the room. Before that, he was doing his absolute best to beat Sherlock to death. And now…now he is something to be marveled at? Why, because he went away so John wouldn't die and returned with skin that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting?

"I…" he starts, but he isn't sure how to continue because every word he says seems to make John sadder. "I don't…understand," he settles on.

It's the wrong thing to say, because John deflates. He leans on the chair again and hangs his head, exhaling carbon dioxide and stress.

"God, Sherlock," he says, sounding completely wrecked, "I am so sorry."

"Whatever for?"

"Whatever—? Where shall I start?" John sounds incredulous, "How about for treating you like shit on the bottom of my shoe for _saving my life_?"

"You didn't know why I—"

"Maybe then for assaulting you _less than a week_ after you'd been _strung up_ in some cell in Eastern Europe?"

"John, you couldn't have _known_ —"

"How about for being pissed off that you left me behind? For assuming you were gadding off to go on adventures across the globe and didn't want old, dull, _stupid_ John Watson slowing you down?"

Sherlock feels the blood drain from his face at the prospect, and judging by the look on John's face it's a visible change. He can't help it, though—the idea of John being beside him the entire time—watching him murder people—being _violated_ with him—

"Sherlock, fuck, okay, breathe. Come here. Come here. Sit. Breathe, Sherlock."

It's a ridiculous request because he's obviously already breathing—he's actually excelling at the practice, if the heaving gasps are anything to judge by. John steers him over to the couch anyway and he sits obediently, appreciative for something solid beneath him because the room has begun to tilt alarmingly.

 _His skin is sliding filthily against Sherlock's, other hand yanking on his bound arms so hard he fears breakage—_

"God, you're shaking. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's okay. I'm sorry." There's a hand carding through his hair, gently pressing his face into a jumper that smells like tea and the desert and that dreadful cologne that's probably the reason for several failed dates. Sherlock fists a hand into it, though, because damn it all if that isn't the scent of home.

"If you had been there," he says, and the words taste like sulfur, "if—you would have—and I wouldn't have been able to—"

"Shh, I know. I know, and I wouldn't ever ask that of you," John's gentle voice hushes. There's a niggling voice in the back of Sherlock's head that is utterly appalled by the fact that he's being _coddled_ , but the suddenly-frantic urge to ensure John's solidity, _safety_ , far overpowers it. He clutches the jumper closer and distantly notes that it's going to be horribly wrinkled.

It takes several minutes of this—of John's cooing and gentle but firm hold—before Sherlock's heaving dwindles back to a normal pattern. When he comes back to himself, he releases John's jumper immediately as though it burns. John, taking the cue, withdraws his hand from Sherlock's hair, but he lays it on Sherlock's shoulder instead, maintaining the connection. Sherlock won't grasp that hand, but he doesn't shake it off either.

* * *

Between his extraction and Mycroft's decision that he is stable enough to be moved, Sherlock awakes for long enough to register that he is in Croatia.

He has the occasional moment to himself, either when Mycroft is off starting a war or asleep in the chair beside his bed, which he takes to gaze out the window to his room and into the vibrant blue of the Adriatic Sea. He thinks about skin on skin and semen drying on his inner thigh and broken ceramic plates, and he wonders perhaps if he submerged himself in the water and didn't resurface for the next ten thousand years, then he might come close to feeling clean.

In those moments, he yearns so hard for John that it is a physical ache, because that is the precise color of John's eyes in the sun, or in the dim lighting of 221B Baker St when his smile has crinkled his eyes just right.

John's eyes are Croatia-water-blue, he thinks, and he needs to control himself before he does something absolutely unacceptable like cry. He thinks about the fact that he'll soon see John again, though, and that John's eyes are one of the universe's constants so they will still be Croatia-water-blue and he will still smile and his smile will still crinkle his eyes and then Sherlock does cry, and he startles Mycroft so badly that he's in the hall calling for a nurse before he realizes Sherlock isn't bleeding.

* * *

John finds out that he's alive, though, and he doesn't smile once. He spends an entire evening assaulting Sherlock, actually, and his eyes remind Sherlock of thunder.

Even after Sherlock explains why he had to jump, John refuses to even see him and on the few occasions that Sherlock breaks and spies on him in the supermarket, the army doctor is not smiling at all.

And then when he turns up on the doorstep to 221B, suitcase in hand and no Mary in sight, he completely refuses to smile at anything Sherlock presents him with. Sherlock dares not joke purely as a matter of survival, and John avoids being in the same room as Sherlock as though the detective has tuberculosis. Once, John gets up from his chair and walks out of the room the moment Sherlock sets foot inside. Sherlock stares at the door he left through for a long time, thinking about the Adriatic Sea and feeling like drowning.

* * *

After far too many more minutes of inane platitudes, John brushes the fringe back from Sherlock's forehead and sends him to bed. He's probably shocked that Sherlock goes without complaint, but that's fine. Sherlock has the best night's sleep of his life knowing that John is there and John doesn't hate him and John won't ever let anyone hurt him like that again.

About two days from now, John will march him down the stairs and into a cab that will take him to a therapist's office that will _reek_ of Mycroft's influence. Sherlock will go in looking pale and come out looking paler, but he'll continue to go for the next few months, even after John has given him the okay to go back on cases.

Too soon, they will be called to a crime scene that will be literally covered by the shattered remains of the woman's china collection, and Sherlock will see the shards on the floor and look pleadingly at John, and John will suggest that they step out for a moment "to bounce ideas around."

Lestrade will be a bit puzzled, but he'll let it pass because it will mean Sherlock is learning when to take a step back and acknowledge his limits, and to trust those around him enough to ask for help when he needs it.

And that's a brand new concept, but when he has composed himself and is able to go back in and lay his deductions down, John's answering smile will make him more than willing to give it a go.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Hot damn, this took forever. This has also been my first new work since 2014, which is absurd but there it is. To those who read the work that came before this (Collateral Damage), I hope this is a fitting replacement. To those who read this for the first time, please let me know what you think!**

 **(I added the therapy bit at the end because things don't magically get better because you told your friend about it all; I think Sherlock deserves a more realistic way of dealing with this hurts (hopefully he can get that in this upcoming season too).**  
 **((Sorry I hurt Sherlock so much; I promise I love him really.))**


End file.
